Rating: NR | Runtime: 88 minutes
Release Date: September 23rd, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Not the Funeral Home / Vinegar Syndrome Pictures / Shudder
Director(s): Austin Jennings
Writer(s): Matthew Frink & Austin Jennings

The dead mend. The living weave.

Cryptic words with occult meaning or pure aesthetic? I lean towards the latter due to the very intentional grain and hammy performances harking back to 70s-era European horror. And since most of those classics aren’t my cup of tea, neither is Austin Jennings’ Eight Eyes.

That’s not to say it isn’t well-made with some ace practical effects. It’s simply really slow and repetitive en route to a bonkers finale that doesn’t even attempt to ascribe purpose to anything beyond an excuse to deliver a cool montage sequence of vivid imagery portraying the opening of “eyes” onto metaphysical planes beyond time and space. A lot of style, very little substance.

Bruno Veljanovski is fun as Saint Peter, though. He’s our guide into this nightmarish world of whatever the heck is going on. (Think the Sawyer Family if they were telepathic, I guess?) He delivers a winning smile and a ton of charisma while wooing Cass (Emily Sweet) and Gav (Bradford Thomas) into tagging along on his tour of Macedonia and a cutthroat temper once duty trumps artifice.

I just couldn’t care. Cass and Gav’s marriage and well-being are at stake on paper, but they’re mostly pawns to Jennings and Matthew Frink’s script. They facilitate the reveals of “Mama’s voice” and wax masks. If we didn’t have victims, we’d have no reason to visit the lion’s den. And so, in the end, it feels like a trip through a Haunted Horror Night attraction. A long wait building up expectations only to be whisked through five rooms of meticulously orchestrated horror devoid of life.

Its target audience should love it.

Viewed while I was a member of the Domestic Narrative Jury at the 2023 Buffalo International Film Festival.

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Emily Sweet in EIGHT EYES; courtesy of BIFF.